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Chapter 71: Attraction
This was a wet and dark underground environment. It was very logical that creatures such as spiders would exist in a hole within a hole like this one.
The problem was that this spider was too huge.
If Ai Qian’s Charm skill had attracted female mosquitos, then it was a minor nuisance. If it had attracted normal-sized female spiders, it wasn’t a big problem either. However, the attraction of such giant-sized spiders was absolutely lethal!
The spider that jumped straight at Ai Qian’s head looked a little larger than even a human human head after it had extended all eight of its limbs. Its speed was tremendous and its aim was flawless. It deserved its title as an insect hunter.
Yue Qiang once watched about this giant-sized spiders from Animal World. Not only a creature this size could hunt the average insect, it could even hunt a small bird. Moreover, spiders in general had poison glands in them, so he did not doubt in the slightest that Ai Qian would die the second the spider descended on him.
His iron rod was already equipped beforehand. He activated the skill Run and Basic Jabbing present within the iron rod at the same time.
His move was both swift and timely.
An instant before the giant spider would land on top of Ai Qian, the iron rod pierced through its body and saved the trader’s life.
Yue Qiang did not dare to pause to check his handiwork. With his quickest speed, he tossed the skewered spider towards the far distance.
The spider’s corpse fell on the ground with a pop noise.
The ground was completely dark, and it was impossible to see their surroundings at all. However, when the spider’s corpse landed on the floor, a series of soft rustling sounds immediately rang from that area. It was exactly the same sound as the dark shadows made when they were feeding on the soldier’s corpses.
It was obvious that the dead spider was consumed by its kind the second it landed on the floor.
While pulling at the duo and retreating swiftly, what Yue Qiang was thinking inside his mind was surprisingly not the situation before him: My iron rod isn’t attracted to the ground. Does that mean it’s not made of iron at all, or is it made from other rare metals?
He swiftly retreated to the vertical ladder area and climbed back into the small room above in the order of Yin, Ai Qian, and Yue Qiang.
After killing yet another two fast crawling spiders, the trio used the table and blocked off the hole.
“I’m not sure what to say about that Charm of yours.” Yue Qiang said, “There are at least one hundred of those giant spiders inside that hole. If they were spread out I might have been able to kill them one by one with my iron rod, but obviously that’s a moot point now. They’re all gathered beneath this wooden table. We don’t even know if they could eat through the wood and crawl out. If they could, we’re all going to die here.”
Ai Qian looked a little embarrassed; the appearance of these spiders was absolutely his fault. He stood up and said, “Let me check outside and see if the road truly is completely sealed off.”
He quickly returned.
“The whole thing collapsed.” he said, “They’re completely sealed by rocks. There’s absolutely no way we’re getting out there.”
“So we don’t have a choice then.” Yue Qiang said, “Either we are trapped here until we die, or we remove the table and kill a few spiders before getting eaten alive by them.”
Ai Qian looked a little loss as to what to do in this desperate situation, but Yin spoke up, “Actually, I think this is a good thing.”
Both men looked surprised by her statement.
“This is a good thing?”
“Mm. A good thing.” Yin said, “At the least, we can defend this small room for a short amount of time. If Ai Qian hadn’t used his Charm ability just now, we would’ve travelled deep into the passage just now. When the time is right, those spiders would have crawled out from every direction and cut off every path of retreat. Now that is certain death!”
Yue Qiang gave it a brief thought and noticed that it was as she said.
The reason they managed to escape back to this room was purely because the spiders were too far away. However, if they had travelled deep into the passage and was forced to deal with attacks from every direction, then Yin and Ai Qian would absolutely perish. He might be real fast, but in a situation where the floor was completely littered with spiders, it only takes a bite before he was dead as well.
“You used your Charm at a good time.” Yin said encouragingly before continuing to analyse, “So now we have two choices. One, we break through the sealed passage and leave through the front hall. However, since it was completely sealed, we cannot use this method. The other choice we have is to kill every spider that’s blocking our way and reach our destination, that is the deepest area of this great tomb.”
“The problem is how to kill them though.”
“We use fire.” Yin said.
Her tone had been calm without any emotional fluctuations at all. She sounded like she was saying, ‘let’s eat some fried julienned potato tonight’. However, the method she provided was both simple and effective.
“There are a lot of wooden beams used to support the cave walls in the passage behind us. Since the whole path had been sealed off, it’s no longer a problem even if we take them all apart. We’ll light them all up and burn these spiders to death.”
“A spider this size is most definitely the strongest existence of the food chain in this underground cavern environment. There are a hundred or more of them down there, so I can say with almost absolute certainty that every spider within the passage had surfaced to the open. This is perfect opportunity to eliminate them all in one fell swoop so that we don’t have to watch our backs at every moment while fighting against other enemies.”
Yin’s talking speed was slow and without hesitation, giving off the impression that she was figuring out a way to save money, “We have a sufficient supply of both wood and oxygen in this place, so we do not need to worry about suffocating. We even have a torch to use as a fire source, so this isn’t a problem as well. To be honest, we are really lucky to be able to use Ai Qian’s ability and coincidentally lure out the biggest hidden threat inside the cave and eliminate it. Otherwise, there’s an extremely high likelihood that none of us will survive when we are attacked by spiders from every direction.”
When Yue Qiang went through Yin’s thought process inside his mind, he suddenly discovered a problem, “It’s true that we can burn the spiders to death, but how exactly are we going to do it? Do we toss the ignited wood into a group of spiders? While we may be able to burn a portion of them to death like this, the ones that survived are still more than enough in number to kill us. After all, the second this table is removed, the spiders would charge at us from everywhere.”
The more he thought about it, the more he thought that it was a huge problem, “If we surround the cave entrance with wood and light them up with fire, we could guarantee our safety for a while. But these spiders aren’t stupid either. They could totally wait until we’re out of wood before charging out into the open. Your method won’t work like this!”
“It will work.” Yin said before making a show of hand towards the seated Ai Qian beside them.
“The solution of our problem is on you. Please use your Charm ability once more.”
“Let us see if your Charm will attract these spiders so much that they would rather throw away their lives to consume you!”
